FBCA boys win district title; hosts TAPPS playoff game Friday

Published 5:09 pm, Thursday, February 19, 2015

By Robert Avery

ravery@hcnonline.com

Two razor-thin wins, one sweet district championship.

One week after enduring 14 lead changes to nip Beren Academy in a do-or-die game at Pasadena-First Baptist Christian Academy’s Activity Center, the Warriors’ varsity boys basketball team captured the school’s first-ever district championship with a 55-49 victory over Beren at a neutral site in Houston Tuesday night.

With the win, head coach Kevin Richard’s club will host a bi-district championship game Friday night at 7:30. The team will entertain Providence Classical School , a TAPPS program in Spring that competes in the North Houston Athletic Conference.

Prior to the boys taking the floor, the varsity girls will also host Providence with a 6 p.m. tipoff.

Based on the thrilling 43-41 win over Beren 10 days ago, it kept a close eye on Nace Sweeney and Jacob Harding, the twin outside threats who drained five 3-point goals. What it didn’t figure on was several of the roster’s other names depositing bonus buckets.

“Our guys came out hot in the first quarter and we hit five 3s in the first quarter. Noah (Salazar) had two, Garrett (Houston) had one, Jacob had one, Nace had one. It’s hard to guard when that many different people are scoring. So that helped us out a lot,” Richard said during a Thursday afternoon practice.

Salazar scored 15 points and Brock Suparto contributed 12, followed by Houston with 11. Meanwhile, Sweeney and Harding were limited to single digits, an obvious sign that Beren kept close tabs on those two, making sure they didn’t go wild in the scoring column.

“That was the third time we played Beren and so they had kind of seen everything that we regularly do. So for those two guys (Salazar, Suparto) to step up and play above and beyond was huge,” Richard said.

Defensively, it was one of those bend but never break efforts.

“Good, solid defense. Every time they got within two or four, we’d pull away a little bit. The guys just fought hard, played real hard. You could tell they wanted to be there and they wanted to win. The guys stepped up and played like it was a big game,” Richard said.

Rebounding-wise, Houston, Christian Finck and Suparto combined for the neighborhood of 25 boards, getting the job done under the offensive and defensive glass.

Beren Academy will open the playoffs by taking on Huntsville Alpha Omega this weekend.